


true lover's knot

by scientistsinistral



Series: there and back again [2]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Edwardian Period, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn, World War I, domestic life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23543578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scientistsinistral/pseuds/scientistsinistral
Summary: "A woman can have more than one home, though."“Pick a spot,” says Will, without hesitation, “and I’ll build you one.”1903-1915; how William and Eloise Schofield came to be.
Relationships: William Schofield/William Schofield's Wife
Series: there and back again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650028
Comments: 17
Kudos: 40





	true lover's knot

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: mentioned corporal punishment of children; nausea/throwing up—section beginning 'As it turns out, they don’t need another go.' to 'Yes, I think I might be.'

The last chills of winter are barely hanging on when Eloise first meets Will.

She _knows_ of him; the boys complain after woodworking lessons because Schofield’s work eclipses the efforts of the rest of the class. She hasn’t seen it, of course: whilst the boys are hacking away at wood to try and make something usable, _she_ gets taught how to sew, so that she might have a path in life should all else fail.

It was incredibly clear to everyone, from the moment she started school, that it would take Eloise a while to properly secure such skills. This is how she finds herself rubbing her palms, trying to convince herself she can’t still feel the sting.

This is also how Schofield finds her, as they’re passing through the iron gates.

“Three strokes for poor quality of work?” he says. “Excessive, especially by Miss Carter’s standards, and given that you’re a girl. Even so, David Taylor took the same number for truancy last week, and this isn’t nearly as bad as that—”

“I should thank you not to throw salt in a wound that is still healing,” she snaps back, balling her hands into fists. Pain sears through them, but she has them ready. “It’s funny. I wouldn’t have thought you one for idle gossip, Schofield. If I were you, I would not start now.”

She waits for him to retort; this would not be the first time she has drawn a boy into an argument in the schoolyard, and she is prepared for the fight if it comes. It does not.

“Get some ice, if you can.”

“What?”

Schofield nods his head down at her hands. “Cold numbs the pain,” he says, a tiredness in his voice that can only come from experience. “If you can get it quick enough, the mark might not be so bad, either. Three strokes is sure to leave one regardless, but—if you still want to be able to write tomorrow, it’s a good idea.”

Eloise takes a small step backwards. “How many children in our school do you think were beaten today, Schofield?”

“For that, Farr, you’d need the school book.”

“There were at least four in my class, and I would say that for the boys it’s quite a bit more. So, let’s say there are fifteen children who will have bruises by the end of the day. I have half a mind to ask if you’ve given this advice to all fifteen of those.”

Schofield smiles, a small, wistful thing. “No. But most of them took a fair punishment. Forgive me, I’m still curious as to why you got three.”

She has half a mind not to reply. To turn away and head home, back to the flat above her father’s pub—where she will, indeed, run her hands under the cold tap, Schofield’s right about that—and the response is out of her mouth before her mind has a chance to catch up. “One for poor quality of work. Two for nearly putting a needle through Abigail Jenkins’ eye—oh, don’t look at me like that _,”_ she adds, when Schofield almost looks impressed.

“What did Abigail Jenkins ever do to _you_?”

“She was sitting next to me when I was pulling up a stitch through a particularly tough piece of cloth. The cloth—gave way, the needle went flying through, the thread gave out, and it was lucky I managed to pull it back before her face became a pincushion.”

Schofield looks at her for a moment, barely stifling a laugh. “And the third?”

“The third was for telling Miss Carter that if all else failed, I’d just end up running the pub.”

He laughs, but there is no malice in it. “Imagine that. Walking into the Lady of the Lake and seeing you stood behind the counter, serving pints. Wouldn’t that be a riot?”

She glares at him, then. She does not expect him to wither under it—the boys rarely do—but it is all she can do not to wither herself, and she refuses to bow to the likes of William Schofield.

It seems to work, though. Schofield turns south, and has taken a few steps in that direction when he stops. “You’ve got some buck,” he says, turning back for a moment. “If you ever end up running that pub—I’d come for a pint.” He pauses, then adds, “See you around, Farr,” as he walks away.

Eloise stands there until their conversation only exists in memory, a quiet, hazy dream. Perhaps it was one.

She does, of course, end up seeing Schofield around; they are schoolmates, after all. But she notices now how he puts himself in between boys in the yard and starts spouting off some children’s rhyme. The boys look at him like he’s gone mad, and Eloise does too, until he has done it three times and she realises his point is to get them to stop, if only for a moment. There is no breaking up boys with force alone once they are in full swing, but a second might be enough to bring them to their senses. Most of the time, it is all he needs. Schofield is not always there, but when he is, there are less brawls and less strokes of the cane doled out.

That is not to say he does not get into brawls of his own. Willoughby says something of Schofield’s family one early summer’s afternoon, just before they are to leave primary school, and Eloise has never seen him move so fast. Willoughby is on the ground before anyone knows it, and it takes two other boys to prise Schofield away. He earns a few strikes for his efforts.

He knows it already, and she does not imagine he will manage to find any ice in such a heat, but she gives him the same advice he gave her in the spring. She doesn’t quite know why. 

He smiles, closing his hands so she cannot see the marks, and tells her he will be alright. There is something about him that makes her believe it, even though she knows the pain and how long it lasts. He lifts his head towards the sun, the tips of his hair turning gold in the light, and Eloise wishes she had known him better.

But there is no time. The moment passes, as Schofield passes out of the school gates without so much as another word.

It is the last Eloise sees of him for seven years.

* * *

Her needlework never gets any better, to Mother’s chagrin. “Millicent was introduced to her intended when she impressed Mrs Darlington with her sewing,” she says at the breakfast table, before Eloise is off to work at the post office. Telegraphing is not the most taxing of jobs, and it earns her a wage, no matter how meagre it is compared to the men who do the same job, and do it worse.

She _had_ quietly put the thought of working in the pub to her father, once, a thought he’d batted away immediately. “What, and have men who don’t know their own limits sneaking hands at you all night?” he’d said. He lets her check the books when she gets home from work, though, and she makes quick work of them—arithmetic was always her strong point at school.

Mother declares she will accompany Eloise into the city, says she needs to go to the shops for groceries. Eloise is quite sure Mother will take the opportunity to point out married couples and subtly rib at her. _You are eighteen,_ she’ll say. _Old enough to think about marriage. You might not have to work, if you marry well enough._

Perhaps she would not have to hear of such things if she had left home and gone to a manor house after leaving school, but she did not want to. Reading lives in her soul; she is not sure she would feel at home anywhere else. And the post office is quite all right, really. She knows she will have to give it up, if she marries; it is part of the reason why Eloise is in no rush to be down the aisle.

Mother does as expected, points out the newly married Petersons who have moved in next door, as if Eloise doesn’t see them every day, and the Samuels— _expecting their first, didn’t you hear—_ as they pass Anstey Road, or Hannah and George Pullman, walking arm in arm down Castle Street.

Eloise has the guts to ask her if she might meet with Alice Moore and Sarah Russell after work, and that getting out might increase her chances of meeting someone. She isn’t specifically _looking,_ per se, but she knows Mother will lay off for a little while if she thinks Eloise is at least making an effort. Mother agrees, as long as she is home by sundown.

The breeze rustles through her hair as she leaves Mother and makes her way to work. The air is thicker than it was when she was a child, and the city has inevitably moved on, will continue to move on in the years to come. There is something coming, though she does not know what. She finds it is better to let herself be caught up in the current, rather than trying to fight it.

Work is uneventful. The messages flood in all day, and Eloise taps and writes without thinking too much about what she is delivering. She finds it easier if she does not wonder about the contexts the messages she taps in Morse code down a wire, or the ones she gets back.

She meets with Sarah and Alice on the corner, after they have been let out. Alice is practically bobbing up and down when she gets there, and Eloise knows exactly why. It’s the reason Alice asked her to go out in the first place—these past few weeks, Alice Moore has been stepping out with a boy, and now she is running out of excuses. A chance encounter between two groups of friends is not the most private of meetings, but is better than nothing.

“Besides,” Sarah says, “You never know if one of them might take your fancy, Eloise. Perhaps there’ll even be wedding bells for you before long.”

“Oh, don’t _you_ start,” she replies.

The three of them wander down the high street as Reading starts to wind up for the day, stopping at the milliners and window shopping for hats they won’t be able to afford for years, and swapping pie recipes like they are housewives already, until they end up at Forbury Gardens.

In the distance, there are boys milling about on a corner by a bench, loud and rowdy as her schoolmates were seven years ago; she can hear them shout, even if she cannot discern what.

“That’s Oliver on the left,” says Alice. “His jokes are terrible, but he’s a jolly chap, really.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince her parents of the match. Perhaps she is. Perhaps Eloise and Sarah are just her trial run.

Oliver sees them coming, waves wildly, and says hello when they reach him. He tells Alice she looks beautiful in dressed up, flowery language, and Alice blushes and looks at her feet. Eloise thinks that if there were no friends around, it would go to something more.

But friends there are, and introductions have to be made.

“This is Eloise,” Alice says, “Who seems quite unimpressed at your sweet remarks, Oliver.”

“A pretty girl like you isn’t impressed by kind affections?” asks another boy to their left, dark haired and muscled in places Eloise didn’t know there were places. There is something in his eyes that Eloise has seen before—it is the mark of interest. Mother laments, but she does not quite know that Eloise is not particularly short of potential suitors. She doesn’t know why she keeps turning them away—it is as if she is waiting for something she can’t quite put her finger on.

“No,” she replies, turning this one away too. “I would rather have a gentleman give me some chairs, so my family can stop meandering over whether they will replace ours.”

Oliver turns aside, towards the other boys. “If it’s chairs you want, I actually have a man who could build you some. Isn’t that right, Schofield?”

Eloise knows what she will find before she turns to look, but she is still surprised to see it.

Schofield is taller, now. He has lost the roundness he had when they were children, sharpened out to smooth angles in his jaw and cheekbones, but he seems no less kind than he did back then. There is something in the way he stands and holds himself that reminds of her as the boy who told her to get ice for her welts outside the school gates, and the one who told her he would be alright as she returned the favour.

“I could,” he says now. “In fact, I’m going to be making some quite soon.”

“For who?” asks another friend of theirs. 

“Mr Farr, down at the Lady of the Lake. Decided that his stools are finally wobbling a bit too much and needs some new ones.”

Eloise barely has the time to process the implications of that sentence—that Schofield may at some point have to enter her family’s pub in order to _deliver_ said chairs, and that no doubt Mother will suggest she be home at such a time—when Oliver starts corralling them all in the direction of said pub. She has no doubt the boys intend to go, and will still be there at the end of the night, but she also knows for a fact Alice’s house isn’t much further, and Oliver will take that excuse to talk to her as she makes her way home.

She is right, of course. The pair place themselves firmly at the back of the group, and Eloise is left to get to know Oliver’s friends. She learns that Henry Partridge’s muscles come from his work at the butcher’s and has known Oliver since school, that Andrew Chapman’s older brother married Oliver Marleigh’s sister in the spring, and that William Schofield now introduces himself as Will.

Circumstance is a cruel mistress as to place the pair of them at the front of their little group. Thoughts hang heavy between them, unable to be reconciled into proper sentences. There is so much to say and no words with which to say it, and this is not the place even if there were.

But if she is to maintain the illusion for Alice, she must at least pretend she and Schofield are friends already. “About those chairs,” she begins.

Schofield smiles, catching what she means. “Your father put in the order with us last week. I’ll admit that the wobbly bar stools do lend a certain charm to the place, but it becomes an issue when a leg gives way and Mr Johnson narrowly escapes a concussion.”

“It would not be the worst thing that has happened in that pub,” she replies, but she knows he is right. Her father narrowly escaped a lawsuit, and whilst the other chairs seem to be holding, perhaps a change of affairs is in order. “How many will you make?”

“Sixteen. It will take a good while, but the making of them is not too difficult. Making the timbers for a roof is far harder.” He goes on to tell her that Oliver is a fellow carpenter, and they had laid the timbers for the new houses in the east of the city. He had taken up as a carpenter after a successful apprenticeship two years ago, a necessity after his father’s passing, though he still lives with his mother across town.

Eloise cannot help but remember the fight he had with Willoughby when they were eleven. She’s not sure if she wants to know.

Schofield circles back to the original question. “I will have to deliver the chairs myself, when they are done. I don’t suppose—you might happen to be there when I do?”

Eloise narrows her eyes. She almost certainly will, but she cannot help but play with him a little. “Oh, I’m not sure about that. I am a working woman, after all.”

His face falls, but he recovers soon enough. “Forgive me. I didn't mean to suggest you had nothing more to do that to be at home at all times of day. It was just a thought.”

She smiles. “But, say you’re ever on your way to the Lady after a long day’s work, and you’re passing down Broad Street at around six in the evening and you just _decide_ to stop by the post office? I might just let you walk me home.”

Schofield practically beams.

* * *

Schofield is not on Broad Street when the girls are shuttled out of the office by the women’s door on Monday at six o’clock. Eloise sighs, burying the mild speck of disappointment in the pit of her stomach. She has nothing to expect of Schofield, after all—she merely put the suggestion to him. And a man who has sixteen stools to build shouldn’t be heading every night to the very pub he’s building them for. And a woman should not be too eager in her affections, after all.

“Farr!”

Her head snaps up, and she smiles despite herself. “And here I thought you wouldn’t come, Schofield.” She toys with him a little more, turning to begin her journey home and takes a few brisk steps. A wave ripples through her when Schofield draws up level, and she slows to an amble.

“Are we still Farr and Schofield?” he asks.

“Would you rather we be something else?”

Schofield smiles. “I’m only saying that I have never met an Eloise, either before or since. Perhaps that uniqueness should not be hidden.”

“And I have likely met more men named William in the past week than I have Schofields in my entire life. On that basis, I should go on calling you Schofield.” She would not mind—the name is sweet in her mouth, soft and heartwarming, as if it were the apple pie she made over the weekend. Her signature recipe has been years in the making, and she cannot help but think that whatever she has with Schofield, if she has anything at all, is much the same.

Schofield merely smiles to himself. “If you ever want anything else, Will is always an alternative.”

She smiles back. “Will, then. Will and Eloise.”

And so, Will and Eloise make their way through the city. They rib at each other, at first—her poor needlework and his old tendency to forgo the school texts in favour of Edward Lear. Then talk turns to friends, old and new, and they laugh about how Oliver and Alice will likely be meeting each other at the end of an aisle before long. Remember the cobbles of the schoolyard, and the scratch of chalk on slate, and the facts drilled into their heads by repetition.

When they reach the Lady, Will does not come in. He wishes her a good evening and turns south again, and it is only when he has disappeared around a corner that Eloise realises he has walked half a mile in the opposite direction from where he lives just to be able to take her home.

Just as he does the next day, and the one after that, until it is the weekend again and Eloise knows things about Will that his friends most likely don’t; that he likes to wake up early in the morning to watch the sunrise, has a particular fondness for lemon drops, and spent a good portion of his childhood chasing butterflies in the meadows.

“Work is picking up,” he says on Friday evening. “We’ve only made six chairs—and we have a cabinet to make for Mr Flannery, and we’re laying foundations for a house starting Thursday—and, well, I may have to stay late at the workshop. I might not be able to do this next week.”

“They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Eloise replies. She is almost glad of it—she herself is running out of things to talk about on their walks.

“I don't know how long I will be.”

“I will wait,” she says, and means it.

Will does not come on Monday, and Eloise does not wait for him to be. The city is as loud as ever, Broad Street bustling as people return home to kitchen tables and warm beds. A boy on a bicycle knocks over a passing man, and she is about to point it out to Will and laugh when she remembers he is not there. 

Millie asks her why she looks so glum that evening, especially after she’s been in a _stunningly_ good mood this past week, and Eloise does not have the words to explain everything. She changes the subject, complimenting the way she’s arranged the flowers for her upcoming nuptials, but Millie sees right through her.

“There’s someone, isn’t there?” she asks, tying a piece of ribbon around some stems. “Mother finally got to you.”

Eloise sets her head down on the desk. “Perhaps it was that.” _Perhaps it was a sweet young man I’ve known since school and something about him I’m missing right now._

“And who is he?”

“Oh, no, you’re not having it that easy,” she fires back, pulling herself up. “You’ll go straight to our parents before long and not only will Mother never let me hear the end of it, neither of them will ever let me out of doors again.”

“So, what? You’re going to carry on in secret? Or you’re going to wait until he turns up at the pub and asks Father if he can see you, and you’ll just hope that our parents approve?”

He’s going to turn up at the pub at some point anyway to deliver his chairs, she thinks, but doesn’t say another word, not even as Millie prods, rephrases questions to try and get her to slip up. Eloise knows all of the ways to do so, because she has used them against Millie herself.

She doesn’t have an answer to Millie’s question, though. Not even a week of sun and Eloise takes leave of her senses. She’d thought she was better than that; prided herself on it, even. Let things take their proper, steady pace, not running off with herself like a pack of wild horses and falling into low spirits because of one day’s absence.

“Matters of the heart can turn in an instant,” says Millie, when Eloise says as much. “But if he is a good man, he will do things properly. Wait. Both for your beating heart and for the true nature of your boy.”

“Someone has gotten wise. I think I quite preferred the times when you were pulling at my hair.”

Millie only smiles. “Just wait. If he is the one for you, time will make the trees bear fruit. He will come.”

* * *

Eloise had known Will would come when he does, but she is still surprised by it.

It is Saturday morning, three weeks after— _that week_ —and she is helping Father clear up the pub from last night—Fridays are carnage at any time of year. She had come home from the post office yesterday and had caught the glimpse of a fight as she darted through, and she could still hear it once she was upstairs.

She is rubbing at a particularly sticky patch of floor when there is a knock at the door. Behind it is William Schofield, holding the first of sixteen barstools.

“Ah, Schofield! I thought you weren’t going to be here until Tuesday.”

Will smiles. “Chairs are a joy to build, sir. Where would you like me to put this down?”

“That corner over there will do, until I can clear the old ones. I expect you need some help carrying the rest of them in?” Will nods, and Father nods his head at Eloise. “My daughter, Eloise. She’s been toting around these old things since she was barely out of her cot, if you can bear to be helped by a girl.”

Will looks at her, only just realising she is there. “That won’t be an issue, sir. I’m sure she’ll be much help.”

Eloise raises her eyebrows at him, but she stands and follows him out.

“All the fuss you made about being a working woman, and yet you are here when the delivery comes in after all.”

She bows her head and blushes. “Oh, shut up. And I dare say you timed your moment on purpose. Tuesday, didn’t I hear Father say?”

It is Will’s turn to look sheepish, and then they laugh and carry the chairs in. He can carry two, but she only one, so it is five trips out to the van and back. At the end, it is as if she has both forgotten the three weeks they have been away from one another and knows she never wants to do it again.

Eloise would bet ten bob that’s what causes Will to turn to her father and ask if he can see her again. Father is startled for a moment, but asks Eloise her opinion and agrees when she nods. Will suggests a week’s time from now, Saturday morning, and all parties agree.

"That is an oddity," says Father, when they both get upstairs to piping hot lunch on the kitchen table."

"What is?" says Mother. "Sit down so we can eat. Millicent and I were wondering where you two had gotten to—even Saturday's messes don't take a whole two hours to clean up."

"It didn't. The carpenter showed up to deliver the new chairs two days early. He seemed to take a liking to our Eloise, and asked if he could see her again next week. The oddity is that she agreed."

Mother's mouth positively drops open. She starts about a dozen questions and finishes none of them, before she starts making a shopping list for Eloise to bake an apple pie before then. "Food is a way to a man's heart," she says, citing the Victoria sandwiches she made for Father when they were in the first stages of courtship. "Win him over with your cooking, and maybe he'll overlook the fact you can't embroider him a handkerchief for luck."

She does not disclose her history with Will, the fact that he knows the details of her poor needlework already. Perhaps by the time they come to learn, she'll be better at it. If not, well. She's well versed in a good apple pie.

Will shows up on Saturday morning with wide eyes and a flat cap gripped in his hands. Father stays in the pub, cleaning, whilst Will comes in and draws Eloise into conversation over a freshly baked apple pie and pot of tea. Father asks questions, too, trying to scope out the boy, and Will is polite in his answers. Less detailed than he had been when she had asked him the same, but her father seems to be satisfied.

“And what is your dream in life, young man?” Father asks. Eloise’s stomach clenches; the last time he asked that to a boy—Richard Hancock, who she’d spoken to briefly last summer—the fellow had been sent packing, never to be seen again. 

Will considers it for a moment, staring into his teacup as if he will find the answer there, but there is no doubt in his voice when he finally settles at one. “To sit in a field in the sun and know I’ll never have another concern again.”

It is not the answer she was expecting.

“Surely that’s impossible,” she says. “There will always be concerns in the world. You may have a fleeting moment where life is grand and it may seem that way, but you cannot rest on your laurels—the world can turn in an instant. And getting to that point is near impossible, too. A man must ensure food is put on the table, that he and his family are well taken care of. A woman to ensure her home and children are well turned out.”

“A child rarely has a concern beyond that of the next day or so.”

“A child grows up and obtains more concerns than he knows what to do with, which is contrary to your dream of never having another.”

“The gentry?”

“The gentry may not have the concerns that you and I have, but they have houses and land to run, guests to entertain, elaborate schemes just to ensure a proper wedded union. No, I dare say there is but one man that is as you dream.”

Will tilts his head. “And that would be?”

“A man who is about to die. And perhaps not even then.” Will smiles, and Eloise chases that train of thought down its winding alley. “But if a man was to die without concern—then he would have to be sure that all his business was taken care of, and that his family, if he so had one, should go on without him without concern themselves.”

“He would be sure he had taken care of them, or given them the strength to—a stable home and enough money to support themselves. And he would likely be old, so that his children were grown, his parents not burdened by grief at their son’s passing, and his widow not expected to marry again. He would have to aspire to make his circumstances as such so that he could die in peace.” 

Eloise is struck speechless for a moment, but she takes a breath, a deep, life-saving breath that gives her the ability to put words to exactly what she is thinking. “Well, it’s certainly idealistic, and perhaps a little melancholic, but—there is something to be admired in it.”

She looks back at her father. For all she knows, he might have an entirely different opinion, and though they will have an argument on their hands if he does, she must know.

Father looks back and forth at these two pieces of thread tied into a loose knot, considering whether to pull them closer together or to take a pair of scissors and let them fall. 

“Last week was not the first time you met one another, was it,” he asks, though it is not much of a question, and their silence is enough to answer it if it were. “How long has it been?”

“Four weeks,” she says, so taut she might snap before her father has a chance to split them apart. It would probably hurt less. “Though we were friends of a sort in the schoolyard. But this—four weeks.”

Father stands, pulls up to his full height. He is just taller than Will is on the barstool when he does so, and she suspects he will need that knowledge. “Schofield. I suspect you timed your delivery early to increase the chances of my daughter being here.”

Will turns beet red, but doesn’t reply.

“You must know that such deception does not carry favour with a girl’s father.”

“I do, sir.”

“That I would be perfectly justified in turning you out of doors at this very instant, barring them from you as you leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you also have a good trade, and your answer seems to show your commitment to your house and family, which is more than could be said for several other of the men that have tried to win my daughters’ hands.” He pauses. “There is a request that a young man like you usually makes of a girl’s father when he is as close to her as you are.”

“Sir, I would not presume to ask that now,” Will says, pulling himself to his feet and swinging away from the table.

“Oh, I am sure you would not. But I can also see my daughter tense and trembling in her seat out of fear of losing you—” 

Eloise straightens up, gripping the edge of the table to steady herself, keeping her head down as she takes in the beginning of her father’s sentence. A seed of hope buries itself in her heart as she waits.

“And so I must ask you a question, Schofield.”

“Sir?”

“I am sure you know what the expectation is of a courting couple. Are you prepared to one day marry my daughter?”

Eloise looks up in time to hear Will say, “I am, sir,” as sure as she has ever seen him do anything. Father turns the question on her, and it’s all she can do to nod. 

And then, whilst still holding the scissors by his side, he secures the threads. “Then I will allow you to court one another. Do not make me regret it.”

In Eloise’s chest, a tiny flash of green breaks the surface.

* * *

Will calls every Saturday morning for the best part of two years. Sometimes it is tea and conversation in the pub, but more often Mother accompanies them on a walk and takes the opportunity to nudge into Will’s affairs. The first time, she asked questions Eloise had not thought of, and through that she learns that he has a sister, Winifred, and a newly born niece. His answers are always succinct, as they were when Father spoke to him, and more than once Mother expresses a wish that he’d say just a bit more. There’s something he’s hiding, she says. You must exercise caution, Eloise, or you may find yourself paired with a man you do not truly know. You have not known him long—not as he is now. 

The words creep into her mind as she talks with him. Mother is right; Will talks more when they are speaking alone—as alone they can get with Mother walking a few paces behind—is a little livelier, perhaps, but there is something indiscernible beneath it all. Something he is holding close to his chest, and once she notices it she becomes a little occupied with figuring out what it is. She does not pry, but she takes slips and pieces of the information he gives her, tries to put them together, and is left none the wiser.

She supposes she will know, in time. 

Besides, she has plenty more to reckon with. Millie marries and leaves to start her own home, Alice is engaged to Oliver before long, and even quiet, timid Sarah takes comfort in Andrew Chapman. They start talking of their numbered days in the post office, and it sends a certain shiver up Eloise’s spine. Though only twenty, she has grown to like her work; they have started rotating her on sorting duty, though she is still most often stationed at her telegraph machine. Eight hours a day, five days a week, keeping Reading connected with the world.

The air grows ever thicker, a far off storm cloud brewing in the east, driven by the wheel of progress and troubles stirring in faraway lands. Those seem so far off she tries not to think about them, not when there are more things to concern herself with at home. 

A courtship goes two ways, after all. She is introduced to Will’s mother when they have been courting a year, and then his sister and nieces—her second daughter, Amelia, soon followed the first. It is not completely smooth sailing—Mrs Schofield and Eloise often come at odds with one another, largely on trivial matters, but it is a while before Eloise learns that there are some fights worth having, and many that are not. Before then, her quick wit wins her no favours, and one afternoon, she hears Mrs Schofield tell Will she doesn’t understand what a gentle thing like him is doing with a woman like _that_.

She wins her over, eventually, when she learns to hold her tongue and proves she is capable of running a home. The mark of approval finally comes when Mrs Schofield forgets she has left the stove on and Eloise snuffs out the fire with a cloth before it can take over the kitchen.

Their families start talking, wondering what is taking them so long, and Eloise comes to ask the same herself. Perhaps it was the way in which they began—one could hardly blame William Schofield to be careful in his courtship after starting like that, but when they have known each other for this long, enough time to unpick the stitches holding together the armour plates he has built up around himself, enough time to mellow from verbally sparring schoolmates to a pair quite ready to build a home together, she cannot help but feel stagnant. 

In another world, she might do it herself, but she knows she cannot. She must wait. She once said she would, and she meant it, and this waiting is not so bad, really. It is not as if they cannot see one another, but—she cannot lie and say she does not long to know what it would be like to do something so simple as to hold his hand.

It finally spills over, one evening, when he is standing across the road from the post office when she exits into a clouded autumn evening. His shoulders are powdered with sawdust, as they usually are, but what isn’t business as usual is the fact that his right hand is tied with a bandage. He catches her staring and places it behind his back, but it is too late: she has already crossed and asked him what has happened.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” he says.

“ _Will.”_

“Hand slipped on a saw. The wound isn’t deep; it’ll heal by next week. I’m fine, Eloise.” He looks down at it and smiles. “Did your mother ever kiss your wounds better when you were a girl?”

“Is that supposed to be a suggestion?”

“You didn’t answer the question, and would you?”

She laughs, incredulously. “Yes. Yes, she did, though I didn’t want them most of the time. Too enamoured with taking care of my own soul and all that. And—you know full well that I can’t touch you like that, whilst we are not engaged.” She can feel the spindly plant growing in her chest, with too many leaves that have been unfurling themselves these past few years, filling up space with the promise of something more, something that never quite comes. Any longer and she’s sure the plant will start to grow thorns—it has several already, snippets of disagreements she and Will haven’t reconciled and perhaps never will—but she cannot go much longer without knowing which flower is tucked inside the bud at her heart.

“Why aren’t we engaged, Will?” she asks, finally. “If it is because you do not love me anymore—”

“Eloise.”

“Or is it because you are afraid of what my father will say when you ask him, and you’re waiting until we are twenty-one so that no one can say anything if you ask and I accept?”

“ _Eloise.”_

“What is it, Schofield?”

Will looks over the street at the post office. “You said it yourself—enamoured with taking care of your own soul. You like what you do—you like the freedom it gives you, whilst you are still young and able to enjoy it.”

“Will.”

“Once we are engaged, marriage will follow soon after, and I am sure you know full well what that means for your telegraph machines. I would not want to draw you away from them too soon.”

“ _Will.”_

They stand on the pavement of a Reading street, barely a yard away from one another, each daring the other to break the deadlock. People bustle around them—most on their way home to the very throes of married life Will and Eloise are now debating. 

Something gives way. “William Schofield,” she says, looking at the post office too. “You are not wrong in that I would be sad to see my telegraph machine go. But I do not want to keep it if you are the expense.”

“You would trade an income of your own to be a carpenter’s wife?”

“I would trade it to be yours. I was prepared to do so two years ago. That hasn’t changed.”

Will looks at her and swallows, his eyes alight with fear and hope at the same time. “Would you say yes? If I asked you?”

She knows the answer in a heartbeat, but she does not say it. She has learned from last time. “You would need to ask my father first. And a ring—and the typical way. I won’t accept unless you do it properly, now,” she says, a smile ghosting over her lips. She toys with him again, because it is all she can do to restrain herself from bursting. She hopes he will see the answer in it and make the necessary preparations.

She doesn’t know where Will finds the time to visit her father, but she knows when he eventually does. In the mornings, Father regards her with quiet resignation, as if he is preparing to let her go, and he tells her she will always have a place in their pub as she’s helping him clear up one evening.

Eloise laughs. “I’m your daughter. I don’t think I could give up this place for good if you paid me. Besides, where else will sneak me a pint of cider when I come home whilst the patrons aren’t looking?”

Father grumbles, though there is no force in it. His protestations are mostly for the benefit of her mother, but the fact that he gives her a glass of frothy nectar whenever she asks for it. He sighs. “When did you grow up, Eloise?” he says, and looks down at her knees as if he expects her to be only that tall.

“When you didn’t let me work in the pub and I had to go to the post office instead, Papa.”

Father laughs, a big hearty laugh, and it casts her back to the night their family didn’t have enough coal for the fire, so they’d swaddled themselves in blankets in the sitting room and told stories. Eloise doesn’t have much of a gift with words, but that night even _she’d_ managed to cobble the right ones together to draw that wonderful, proper laugh out of her father, and it had kept her warm all night. It keeps her warm again now, the thought that if nowhere else, she’ll always have this little pub on the west side of Reading to come home to.

She lets herself wonder, just for a moment, when and where it will be. Oliver proposed in the park, says Alice, whereas Millie was engaged in the sitting room of the Darlington house, after she had taken afternoon tea with George’s family.

In the end, she should have seen it coming.

The boys come into the pub on a Friday evening. Partridge, Schofield, Chapman and Marleigh. Eloise only knows because she sneaks a glance through the keyhole to the door at the top of the stairs at just the right moment, but to be entirely honest, Oliver Marleigh’s voice is loud enough it could be heard across oceans.

She forces down a note rising in her chest. They might be here for no other reason than the fact the Lady is their favourite pub in town. And if he were going to—he would not bring his friends with him.

But Mother catches her looking for the fourth time in an evening and tells her to go make a start on the laundry, if she has the opportunity. 

She cranks sheets through the mangle with more force than is probably required at eight o’clock.

She sorts the tins in the kitchen cupboard at nine.

Reorganises the decorations on the mantelpiece at fifteen minutes past nine.

Takes to her mother’s sewing basket by nine twenty, and within another ten minutes, nearly has a repeat of the Abigail Jenkins incident with her own face.

Starts dusting Millie’s bedroom that hasn’t been lived in for two years at ten.

Does anything, anything at all, just to keep her hands busy. Just to keep herself from sagging to the floor under the weight of expectations she knows will not be fulfilled tonight.

The evening draws to a close—slowly, too slowly, but it does eventually come at half past ten—and the men stumble out into the street as the weekend properly begins. There are a couple of patrons still in the pub when Eloise opens the door just wide enough to stick her head through, just in case—

He is still there. William Schofield is sitting at the pub counter on one of the barstools he built with his own hands, tracing the rim of an empty glass with his index finger, and his friends are nowhere to be seen.

She opens the door all the way and descends to her pub without stopping to think about it. A few heads turn her way, and she sees more than one man lick his lips, but Father glares them all down. 

He does not glare at Will, because Will hasn’t turned to look at her. But he grips his barstool with his right hand—the wound has healed enough for him to take the bandage off—and stares into his glass like it’s the only thing on Earth, and the bud in her heart starts to tremble, lifting its weary head towards a dim light.

She waits until it is just her and William and her father left in the pub, as it has been so many Saturdays before, before she crosses and sits a few stools down-counter from him. “Hello,” she says. “You’re usually not here until tomorrow morning.”

“No,” he breathes; a slow, deep exhale. He looks down at his empty glass. “I think I need some water.” Father pours him a glass, and looks at him with the pain of resignation, shards of acceptance, and perhaps the faintest sliver of fondness all at once, coming together into a fogged stained glass window.

Then he leaves. He climbs up the stairs to the flat and shuts the door behind him. 

And then it’s just Will and Eloise.

They don’t say anything for a moment; only the slow tick of the clock behind them keeps the room from utter silence. Eloise traces indents on the counter, marks that are older than she is. She climbed on top on the old stools to trace those same marks as a child—goodness, has it been so long?

“I never get to see this place so late,” she says, closing her eyes and breathing in the musk. “The floors are sticky, and the light in the back keeps flickering, and the seats in the snug are ripped, if you really look. But it’s home.” It floods over her, intense and entire, the full impact of everything she may leave behind. But the possibility of a future—of the winding river finally giving way to the open sea—she cannot let that pass her by. “A woman can have more than one home, though.”

“Pick a spot,” says Will, without hesitation, “and I’ll build you one.”

He reaches into his pocket; he tries to be discreet about it and fails, but it hardly matters. He clasps his hands together in his lap. “I mean it. I don’t have land, or a lot of money, but I’ll make a home for you. A home to come back to at the end of the day. A home to bring up our little ones. A home to grow old in.”

He holds his hands out in front of him, then opens them into a cup, offering her a silver band that glints in the moonlight flitting in through the front window. 

“I’d do this properly—like you said—but I’m afraid of what’ll happen if I kneel down on that floor.” _You’ll either rip your trousers or never get the stain out of them,_ Eloise wants to say, but she cannot break this moment, cannot shatter the coloured glass before it has a chance to reveal its image.

“But I will give everything I have to you, if you’ll let me. Eloise—will you marry me?”

“Of course,” she says, because the truth is that they have never done things properly and she doesn’t intend to start now. 

He slips the ring onto her finger, a thin platinum band adorned with a small diamond, and clasps her hands in his for the first time. There is a silent promise that it will not be the last, and it breaks the dam. Tears prick her eyes, but they fall back inside her and water the bud that slightly, slowly, _finally_ begins to unfurl its petals.

But it does not. Not quite yet, not even when the tears are streaming down both their faces as they cling to each other’s hands and press their foreheads together in the space between them, and she knows this dream will not end even when the clock strikes midnight. That there is a great deal still to come.

“What do we do now?” Will says, after they both get a grip on themselves. He has not let go of her hands. “I—think I got to the point where you accepted and didn’t plan anything more than that. I’d take you out for dinner, but I think it’s a bit late.”

“Yes, quite,” she laughs breathlessly, glancing at the clock on the wall, the minute hand driving the hour over twelve and into the new day. “But I’ll tell you what. Do you think you have it in you for another pint, Schofield?”

“In me? Yes. I have a confession—haven’t had a drink all night. Just food and water.”

“Really?”

“Did you want to be proposed to by a drunk man?”

She laughs, and it echoes about the empty pub. She laughs again, just for the effect—it reminds her of being young and hearing one echoed for the first time within the Church of St. Laurence. Lightning strikes her as she realises she will be standing there, listening to the swells of an organ, and it takes everything she has to reply. “You have a point, Will Schofield. You have a point.”

“But thruppence for it?” he asks, rummaging around in his pockets. “No. And why?”

“Oh, never mind the money. You’ll have to spend a lot more on me than that in the future, anyway.” She pauses for a moment, as she drinks in the second great realisation of the evening—a whole life stretched out before them both, and thirty-five shillings a week used for rent and food and keeping the fire in the sitting room burning throughout the evening.

She hops off the barstool and darts around the counter. “What’s your poison, Schofield?” she says, ducking the cupboard for a glass.

“Oh, er, cider,” says Will. “Wait, are you—”

Eloise puts a clean pint glass on the counter as she pulls herself up. “You said you’d come for a pint if I ever ended up running the pub, remember? Well, if we’re going to be married, then this is my last chance. Not quite the same as running it, but, you know.” She reaches over to the cider tap and begins to pour him a glass. “I’d never pegged you as a cider man, but it makes sense,” she adds, sliding the pint over.

“Really?” he says, taking a swig.

“Sweet, but gets me quickly. I can take three pints like baby’s milk because they taste so good, and then I’m intoxicated before I know it,” she drawls, leaning forward against the counter. He turns noticeably red, even in this dim light, and she tips her head back and laughs. “Not my first choice, though.”

“And that would be?”

Eloise bends to grab a short glass with one hand, hooks her fingers around the neck of the scotch with the other, and then slams both on the counter with such force it makes Will jump. “A tip, whilst I’m feeling nice. If ever we get into a rut, an argument that goes on for days without going anywhere, stop by the liquor store on your way home. Buy me a bottle of scotch, and we’ll call it even.”

“I’ll remember that,” he says, as she comes back around the counter with her short glass. “My goodness. We have an entire lifetime of this, don't we?” he says, the glorious realisation laid plain on his face.

It is the third time Eloise understands just what the ring on her finger means. It meets with the first two and swells out of her; there is so much of it she fears the walls might burst, and picks up her glass and drinks just to make the moment stretch out a little longer.

She takes her scotch slowly, as slowly as Will takes his cider, sips snatched in between talk of what their house will be like when they have it. They pour second glasses and thirds until they are both lit with a quiet buzz that carries them through until morning. The hours blur together, the ticking clock an ocean away, and they talk through the night, without care, without concern.

Dawn breaks as a rose blooms in coloured glass, illuminated by a golden sun.

* * *

The engagement is short—enough time to make all necessary preparations and not a day more. Her wedding dress is less fitted and shorter than Millie’s was— _what’s wrong with a corset and full skirt,_ Mother says, though Eloise is secretly glad at the possibility of _moving_ on her wedding day. Will puts aside a portion of his wage every week to pay for wedding rings, a bouquet, trinkets for the bridesmaids. 

Eloise had wondered, when watching Millie write lists of guests and tie ribbons around flower arrangements, that she would feel the same way when it came time to do it all for herself. She does not. In fact, she gives everyone a collective aneurysm at the suggestion of just making the wedding cake in her own kitchen, once they had been debating its size and style at the baker’s for nearly an hour.

It works to her advantage: she is only consulted on the major details of it all—yes, it will be in the morning, lobbying the Archbishop of Canterbury just to hold it at half past two is too much. No, Will, you don’t need to give _more_ of your wage to this wedding—don’t forget you still have your mother to support before you move out and she needs to find an occupation of her own; I would rather not give my future mother-in-law a reason to dislike me again.

They are married in the spring. She wakes up on her wedding day at six in the morning with the knowledge that by the end of the day she will have a husband by noon, though it seems longer. Her young cousins from London require corralling into their duties as flower girl and page, and she cannot help but sweep the dust from their shoulders herself, even as Mother and Millie attempt to command her into staying in her bedroom and letting others take care of business for a change, or the curls they pressed that morning will all come undone.

“Besides, you will have plenty of time to be in control of a home in the years to come,” Millie says, swaddling her newborn, Bertie, and begging him not to cause a fuss in the church. “Enjoy the last moment of letting other people take care of you whilst you still can. And be safe in the knowledge you are marrying the right man. He came back to you, didn’t he?”

“Let us hope he will do so all our lives,” she says, finally satisfied that everything she cannot do in her wedding dress has already been done. She slips into it; the style modest enough for their time, but the fabric light and airy enough that she could float off into the meadow, if she so desired. She does not. Instead, she lets Mother drape a long veil over her face, tries not to pick at the binding holding together her wedding bouquet, checks the buckles on her shoes and checks with Millie that the leather straps will hold. 

"Your father is waiting outside with the car," Mother says, looking Eloise up and down one last time before she is off to the church herself. She grits her teeth together in a futile attempt not to cry, and she gives in before long, taking Eloise by the shoulders. “Oh, my dear girl. You are going to be so happy. I couldn't be more thrilled for you.”

Mother smoothes down the hem of Eloise’s dress that had gotten tucked up as she had bent down to put on her shoes. She is trying to stretch out these last moments of having her daughter to look after, and Eloise cannot blame her for it. She wonders if she will feel the same if she is ever in the same position. It is one of the few times she finds herself wanting to be like her mother.

Father stands by the car. He is more well-dressed than Eloise has seen him in years—one does not need a full suit when running a pub in Reading—and the weight of what is happening comes to rest on her back, but she does not crumple. No, she squares her shoulders and strides out to meet what is coming without stopping to doubt it.

Father asks if she’s ready, opening the car door only halfway in the off chance she says no. But they have come so far, she and William both, and she knows in her heart that a horde of wild elephants would not keep them from being married by this afternoon.

She nearly stumbles in the church aisle when she realises Will is _also_ in formal dress. His Sunday best, most likely—they do not go to the same church, living on opposing sides of town, so she has never seen him in it. Even if she had, it would not be the morning suit he has on now.

He scrubs up well, and it makes her slightly weak at the knees, but she catches herself just in time. She has already fallen, in a sense. She sees no need to translate such abstract motion into reality.

Will lifts the veil and takes her hands. They both manage to trip over their vows, drawing smiles from the congregation, but misspeaking does not change the sentiment they both have in spades, enough to fill up the entire church hall and then some. _To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance._

Father finally puts down his scissors as two pieces of rope tie themselves together; a fisherman's knot on the side of a ship as it sets off on its maiden voyage. They look out onto the uncharted expanse of sea that lies before them, a pair united against whatever the world has in store. 

They stand, and clasp their hands, and do not let go until Will picks her up at the door of a little redbrick house and carries her over the threshold.

* * *

Eloise needs to apologise to her mother for all the grievances she gave her as a child. Running a household, even just that of two people, is more tiresome than the telegrams. It is as not as if she didn’t do her fair share of the housework in their flat above the Lady, but she had been born into an already established rhythm—Mother knew exactly how her house worked and briefed her daughters thoroughly so they’d slip into it without a second thought.

She’d thought she’d known her husband before she married him, and for the most part she had, but knowing a man and sharing a house with him are two different things. She has to make him wash as soon as he gets home from the workshop, after his habit of tracking sawdust all over the house extends to their wedding bed—the scratch quite ruins an intimate moment—and he leaves his soiled clothes next to the laundry hamper in the scullery, even though the proper place is a mere _two inches_ to the left. He learns his lesson after she spends a week not washing them and he runs out of clean underwear.

But there are joys in it, too. Will is not much one to live in mess—scullery aside, the rest of their house is clean, and she finds him one evening in the sitting room with a needle and thread, patching up a hole in the pocket of his coat. 

He smiles up at her as he pulls the thread through the cloth with ease, and she knows the rib will come before Will makes it. “Six years and I suspect you’d still put a needle in Abigail Jenkins’ eye.”

“If you carry on with that line of thought, husband dear, it’ll be _your_ eye that has a needle in it. And it will not be an accident.”

They both devolve into laughter, and then they nestle up in an armchair. She picks a splinter from his fingertip as he cards his other hand through her hair, loosening it from the tightly-wound curls she’s had it in all day. They talk until the fire burns out, and then take themselves to bed, though they do not get to sleep until several hours later.

Slowly, they fall into a rhythm. Up at half past six in the morning for the both of them—Will needs to be out of the house by half seven, and she both has to make their breakfast and his lunch. Then he’s dressed and out of the door, and she does whatever chores need doing, before it’s her lunch and then off into town for necessities and perhaps a spot of window shopping. Home again; she’ll be halfway through dinner by the time Will comes through the door at half six again, and by the time he’s washed up it’s served on the kitchen table. 

If she’s feeling particularly grand, and the house is not too demanding, she’ll even have baked something—she keeps recipes she collects from others in a little blue notebook, and every so often she’ll try a new one. The scones go down well, the treacle tart less so. He likes ginger snaps whilst she’s more fond of shortbread, but they always find their way back to a good apple pie. Perhaps it’s because they feel like they are eighteen again, sitting there over the first one without knowing how the morning would end.

And they always end up curled up in the armchair, one of the few books Will has moved from his childhood home to theirs pressed into his hands. Poetry, most often—he has not lost his schoolyard habit, and he murmurs the words of Carroll and Lear until she could almost recite them herself.

“Why _are_ you so fond of those things, anyway?” she says, when she notices that he does not turn the page of _Through the Looking Glass_ as he rattles off _Jabberwocky_ it its entirety.

Will looks up. There is a cloud in his eyes, as if he has drifted off to some faraway land. It is a minute before he seems to be fully back, and Eloise waits. She does not know it yet, but it is good practice for the years to come. 

But for now, she waits until he smiles again, a quiet thing that does not quite reach his eyes but is better than the blankness that was there a few seconds ago. When he speaks, it is slow and measured, as if he picks every word with resolute intent. “We didn’t have many books in our house, when I was growing up. My father’s wage didn’t stretch to them. But sometimes, on the way home from school, I’d take myself into the library and take out a book. Adventure stories, at first; Robinson Crusoe, Lemuel Gulliver. When I’d worn those down, I started on poetry.”

“And you just never stopped loving the nonsense poets, I suppose?”

“No, no. I started with the Romantics, at first. Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth—how do you feel about planting daffodils in the garden in autumn?”

“That might be quite nice. But what happened to turn you from Wordsworth to Lear?”

Will sighs. “My father found the books I’d hidden at the back of the wardrobe one afternoon. He—got into quite a state. Said I had better things to do with my time than waste it on pithy turns of phrase. He gave me a Bible and told me I couldn’t read another book until I had studied it in its entirety.

"And so I did. I pored over the verses until I could recite them in my sleep, learned morals and lessons until Sunday school became second nature. It took me several years, but when I was done, I asked my father if I could have my poetry again. He gave me _Hard Times_ by Dickens instead. I think he thought that if I saw most fiction as merely a mirror of the world in which we live, then I’d stop reading and spend more time working wood.”

He smiles, fingers thumbing through the pages. “I went the other way. Made sure that books were something to escape into, and the whimsy of Lear found me at the exact moment I needed it most. I’d borrow that book of poetry, over and over, and I’d hide it all over my bedroom so that Father would never find it. When there was that—wrenching in my gut after an hour in the sitting room, or when I could still feel the sting on my calves that lasted long after that, I’d pull it out and mouth the words to myself until everything settled.

"After my father died, I started work. And I’d save a penny—the rest of it went to keeping the house afloat, of course—but I’d save just a penny a day, and eventually I had enough to go to the bookshop and buy myself a collection of Lear’s poems. And then, once I had enough again, I bought that one,” he says, tipping his head down at the book. “They still calm me down on hard days.”

“Today was hard, then?” she asks, even though she already knows by how tense he has been since he got home, a tight knot that not even the soft glow of the hearth can loosen. He nods, and does not elaborate further, and she knows better to pull at the stitches holding him together.

She asks him to recite a poem instead, and he does: a tale of the Jumblies with their green heads and blue hands, and their impossible voyage in a Sieve, all spoken in hushed reverence as if he is calming a child. Perhaps he is.

“It won’t seem so odd when we have a baby of our own,” he says, when he finishes. “My mother keeps asking when we’re going to get around to it. Winifred was pregnant with Beatrice only a month after marrying, she says, and she can’t fathom why we’re not closer to it after fifteen times that.”

“Well, you can tell her it’s not for a lack of trying.” 

Will snorts, and she feels him finally relax into the chair. “Thank you,” he says, resting his head on her shoulder.

“I suppose you’re too tired for another go, then,” she replies, because she doesn’t know what else to say. The quiet yawn she gets back is more than enough of an answer.

* * *

As it turns out, they don’t need another go.

The day begins normally enough; she wakes to the sun streaming through the blinds, casting a shimmering, golden haze over the room. Next to her, Will is still asleep, his hair a mess and the mark on the pillow proof that he’s drooled on it again. Eloise smiles and wonders, as she often does, if she is not still dreaming.

Usually, she’s reminded of reality when Will is up and into the scullery to wash his face, before settling down at the kitchen table with the newspaper, and she has to get their temperamental gas stove to light so she can make porridge for them both.

Not this morning.

This morning, Eloise is seized with a wave of nausea, and she barely makes it to the scullery before emptying what little is in her stomach into the basin. She grips the enamel as a second wave hits. Nothing else comes out, but she stands there and heaves for a good while.

“Eloise?” Will calls from the hallway. “Are you all right? I think I woke up to you bolting out of the bedroom—Eloise?”

She’s about to reply, to tell him she’s fine and she’ll make breakfast in a moment, but then a third wave rolls over her and she bows her head, biting down the acid burn in her throat.

There’s a patter of footsteps behind her, Will by her side in an instant. “Eloise—oh God, Eloise—” he says, once he sees the state of the basin. He starts patting her back. “Get it all out now. Hurts like hell, but it’s better than having to keep running to the scullery.”

She heaves once more, then stills. “I think—I think that’s it,” she says, though she keeps herself leaned over the basin just in case it comes again. When she’s sure it isn’t, she straightens up, and she is about to make her way to the kitchen to start the day when her shoulders sag and she finds it’s simply easier to slip down to the floor. An arm wraps around her waist and brings her down slowly, and she leans into Will’s chest and focuses on simply breathing.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You still need food.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; you’re clearly not well. Go back to bed and get some rest, once you feel up to standing, and I’ll bring you some water and something to eat.” 

She nods, but doesn’t quite feel strong enough just yet; besides, her husband is warm and all-encompassing, wrapped around her like a blanket, and she wants to remain in this moment just a little longer.

“Do you think it was the chicken from last night?” he asks. “You did say you’d had some grief with the oven. I should probably be careful; we’ve got a big job due on the 11th and it’s all hands on deck—”

A bolt strikes her at that moment, and her head snaps up. “What’s the date, Will?”

His brow furrows. “2nd of August, why?”

She counts back so that her head will know what her heart already does. “Will—Will, I should have bled three weeks ago. I’ve been so busy I hadn’t had time to notice, but—”

It takes him a few moments more to catch up, and she sees his eyes widen as he does. “You don’t mean—”

“I mean you might actually have reason to recite those bloody children’s rhymes. I can’t be sure, and we should wait until we are until we tell anyone, but—between that and the sickness? Yes, I think I might be.”

They stare at each other for a moment, before looking down at her belly in quiet disbelief of the mere possibility that they might be having a child.

As time draws on, that possibility becomes reality; the blasted nausea comes like clockwork nearly every morning for four weeks, she obtains a strange fondness for buttered carrots, and the fact that she never gets any thinner is the last nail in the crate.

Both grandmothers-to-be are delighted by the news, though they clash on the proper role and duties of a pregnant woman—Mother wants her to relax as much as possible for a good, healthy baby, whilst the senior Mrs Schofield thinks keeping herself active and moving will encourage the child to do the same when they are eventually born. 

Eloise tries to strike a fragile balance between the two, but the need for fresh air and movement has her keeping to her previous routine as far as possible until her child starts pressing against her ribs and she can only make it into the city for the most pressing of needs—Will calls at the shops that are still open when he finishes work, but there are some places where that is impossible.

For the most part, the months pass in much the same pattern they had before; a few modifications, perhaps, to account for the fact that Eloise grows larger by the day and everything _aches,_ but a whole year of marriage proves useful.

That isn’t to say it isn’t a completely uneventful time. Her childhood habit of goading boys into arguments only exacerbates when she’s with child—half the time it’s things she otherwise would have forgiven Will for on account of keeping a quiet, peaceful home, but sometimes he says something at just the wrong moment and she snaps. Most of the time, she calms soon enough, takes herself for a walk for fresh air and a kinder sun on her face.

There is one occasion, though, that is particularly notable, when they’re in the sitting room in the evening and he asks, out of the blue, “Do you think we did the right thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think—do you think it was the right time? A child, now?”

Eloise swallows, asking the question just to hear him say it, as if nothing will be true until then. “Will—are you saying you don’t want this baby?”

She waits for him to deny it, to affirm that no, he’s just having a moment, for him to put his hand on her stomach and marvel when their child moves again, their agile little one who keeps her mother up at all times of night with well aimed kicks to the ribs.

He does not.

He inhales, slowly. “I don’t know, Eloise. I just—I don’t know.”

“Will, if there was a time for you to doubt whether you wanted this baby or not, it was _before_ I got pregnant, not—not a month before they’re coming!” 

“I know. I know, I’m just—it’s nothing, love.”

She shakes her head. “If it were nothing, you wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.”

“It really isn’t anything,” Will says, standing up and heading for the door.

“No, say it. I’m not having this baby growing up with even a seed of doubt as to whether their father loves them.”

He whirls around. “ _Don’t_. That child—I love them so much already I think my chest will burst any moment now. Don’t—don’t doubt that for a moment.”

“Then what is it, if not that?”

“I told you, it’s nothing. I’m just—a silly thought crossed my mind, but it really isn’t anything you need to worry about. I’ll be fine.”

“ _Say it, Schofield,”_ she snarls.

“Damn it, Eloise, _I’m terrified!”_ Will fires back. He stands there, fists clenched, panting, his eyes wide and wild. It is something Eloise has never— _never—_ seen from him before, not in this intensity. “You said you don’t want our child to doubt that I love them—I’m terrified of that happening, too.”

“I don’t—I don’t think I understand you.”

He exhales, his shoulders sagging. “I just–what happens if I think I’m just doing the best thing for them and it turns out not to be? What if they grow up to hate me?” He pauses, looks away, but even that can’t hide the solemn, silent question that he can’t put the words to.

“Will, no. You’re not going to be your father,” she says, sitting up as far as she can. “I have faith in that.”

“And if I become him without realising it?”

There is a lump in her throat, but she forces it down and levels her voice, because Will’s is shakier than the last leaves clinging onto branches in autumn and that scares her more than anything. “Then I will know when my child is afraid, and I will stop you. Now, if you want something to do, my ankles are killing me. Little one is so big now that I can’t even bend down to rub them myself.”

Will crosses the room and kneels before her. He works the ache out of her ligaments with careful, calloused hands, and he sings to himself as he does. She tries to place the song, but she cannot, and it is only when he has gone around again that she realises that he has merely put a tune to a poem he has told himself many times before.

“‘ _The Walrus and the Carpenter_

_Walked on a mile or so,_

_And then they rested on a rock_

_Conveniently low:_

_And all the little Oysters stood_

_And waited in a row.”_

Eloise is unsure what possesses her to pick up the rhyme. Her singing voice resembles more of a screaming banshee—especially compared to his golden, dulcet tones that fill the room, reaching into every nook and cranny and coating the walls until they almost drip with sweet nectar—so she only murmurs the words, but there is something in her that cannot let this moment pass without immersing herself in it, too.

_“‘The time has come,' the Walrus said,_

_To talk of many things:_

_Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —_

_Of cabbages — and kings —_

_And why the sea is boiling hot —_

_And whether pigs have wings.'”_

Will looks up, his eyes alight, and he stares at her like she is the greatest thing on Earth. When he has finished with her ankles, he places his hands on her stomach and watches as the baby shifts under them, and it is as if the happenings of mere minutes ago never came to pass at all.

* * *

Two weeks before Eloise is due, she takes a slow walk around the neighbourhood, to get some air before she is shut away for weeks, though there is little comfort in it. This city has been hers all her life, but she no longer truly knows it, not when she can no longer dart through back alleys and down secret passageways, to stop at the sweet shop, press her hands against the front window, salivating at gems in glass jars and wondering if she can coax a coin out of her father to buy some the next day.

It is faster than she is now. Once all this is over, she will have to match it—to let herself be taken in whitewater rapids rather than trying to resist them. A new world is coming—a world of children who squirm out of her grasp, and a world of something so much more.

She returns home, and shuts the door, letting herself live in golden, hazy days a little while longer, half-begging her child to be late, so that she might have another day or two to enjoy it.

The baby does not oblige. She comes right on time, and it is a pattern that will continue all her life. She comes, quick and easy; so easy the doctor and midwives marvel at the sight, and so quick that Eloise does not have to be concerned at the sight of her husband’s face, screwed up in anguish when he hears the screams of her own.

Her heart swells ten sizes when she first lays eyes on her daughter. Eloise is drenched in sweat, the sheets are stained red, and she cannot seem to catch her breath, but it all hardly matters. She holds her girl close to her chest and cries when she first hiccups.

“She’s beautiful,” Will breathes, when he can finally speak again; he spent the first hour unable to say a word, though he made up for it by cradling their daughter’s scalp and kissing her forehead more times than he has fingers. “Hello, my dear. _Hello_ ,” he says, when she clasps his little finger and refuses to let go, and his eyes, wide and full of starlight, fix onto her with gentle intensity. Contrary to his earlier concern, Eloise is sure their daughter won’t doubt her father’s love for a second, not with the way they stare at each other in childlike wonder.

They name her Edith Helen. They leave parents’ names off the table until they at least have had another. Their firstborn should have a name of her own; a new name for the beginning of a new age. The world shifted the moment Edith first cried, and it continues to shift every day as she grows into herself. She keeps her parents up all night and demands every minute of her mother’s attention during the day. 

The measured routine Will and Eloise had cultivated over a year of marriage is shattered, but not without blessings peppered through the weeks as Edith grows. She takes to life as quickly as she entered it: first smiles at a month old, first laughs at three, and reaches for her parents fiercely and often, once she can see them properly. New miracles arise every day, and they take stock in each and every one.

Which is just as well, because the day that Edith learns to turn over, the world does too. At the end of June, hundreds of miles away, an Archduke is shot in Sarajevo, setting off a chain reaction Eloise tries her best to ignore, tries her best to live in her little world only. She puts Edith in her pram and takes her for a walk and convinces herself she is only imagining that the atmosphere is so thick she can barely breathe. Everything around her is business as usual, after all—children toss balls in the streets, women stop at the shops for new dresses and hats, men sell fruit and flowers in the marketplace—the people are concerned with the troubles in Ireland, but the clash in the East ruffles no feathers.

Will and Eloise spend the last moments of peace on a picnic blanket in the park, with friends. It is Monday, a bank holiday, and many people in Reading have gone away for the weekend, but Eloise doesn’t trust herself to take Edith away just yet.

It is the exact same group from four years ago, though Sarah and Alice are Chapman and Marleigh now. 

Alice and Oliver spend a lot of time fiddling with their wedding rings, and Alice blushes when Eloise teases them about the convoluted scheme they once sent their friends on. Alice soon retorts by holding up Eloise’s own left hand and reminding her that she would not have met Will if she had not done so, and it is her own face that reddens. 

The Marleighs have a one-year-old daughter, Ellen, and Alice is carrying another to be born in the winter. Oliver is hoping for a son this time—a boy to carry on the family name, one he can teach to cut timbers and become a carpenter like his father. He nudges Will, who echoes the sentiment.

Eloise tells him to wait at least another six months, because she’s too busy recovering from Edith to consider another.

Sarah is having trouble doing the same, though she and Andrew are confident that their time will come. She sits in his lap, and they dote on one another in that quiet, simple way that has carried since they first met—they were engaged and married without much ceremony, and if Andrew did not hand-deliver the Schofields’ wedding invitation, Eloise might not have noticed they were married at all.

Henry Partridge, on the other hand, has sworn himself an eternal bachelor. He is not short of women interested in him, with his good looks and toned arms, but he seems to be content in it, and as he puts Ellen and Edith on his knees and smiles warmly at them it hardly seems to matter. He plays peekaboo, delighting as they gurgle over and over, and he is so easy with them Eloise does not even fear when he bounces Edith up and down in his lap like she does.

They share marmalade sandwiches and cakes from a wicker basket under the shade of a full tree and delight in one another’s company, as if they are eighteen again and all just learning how to be adults. They are all there when Henry passes Edith back to Will. They all hear her proclaim an unmistakable “Dada!” when her father’s face enters her field of vision, and they all laugh when Will’s face freezes in shock and later when he asks, no less than seven times, if he hadn’t just been dreaming it. 

He is still asking Eloise when they are on their way home, and is only convinced when Edith says it again. He rocks her in his arms until it is time for her to sleep, and it is a good while before he places her into the crib he built for her, murmuring, “Yes, sweetheart. That’s me. I’m your papa. I’ll always keep you safe.” When he turns back to their bed, his eyes are wet, and Eloise’s are too.

The next day, Britain declares war on Germany.

Four days after the war begins, the Government passes an Act that curtails the opening hours of pubs—the Lady can now open only at noon, must shut in the late afternoon, and the beer will be watered down. To dissuade disorderly behaviour, they say. Eloise understands it is for the sake of the country, but Mother laments the fact that the pub will not take as much as it once did—though with all the men leaving, it would hardly matter.

The army leaves for France that same week, and men Eloise saw in the pub all throughout her childhood enlist. _England expects that every man will do his duty,_ say the papers, and many do. _Kitchener wants you,_ say the posters, sending men to the volunteer offices in their droves.

She does not have the courage to ask Will if he will follow them. When the Reading men start leaving for training, leaving their sweethearts and families behind, her stomach sinks. Her guts twist in knots, resigned to the knowledge that it will be her, soon enough—Will is cautious, but there is a certain fervour in the outgoing tide and Eloise knows he will not resist it.

“Partridge has left for training,” he says, as he comes in from work one evening. “The unmarried men at the workshop are gearing up for it, too.”

“And you?” she says, though she already knows the answer.

“Not yet,” he says, casting his eyes over at Edith, who is sitting up against Eloise and takes great pleasure in doing so. “When she’s a little older. Besides, you know what they’re saying. It’ll be over by Christmas. With any luck, we’ll forget it even happened.”

It is not the answer she was expecting, and she practically doubles over, a heavy breath ripping out of her as her entire body relaxes and her gut begins to untangle itself. She had been so sure he was going to, that she still cannot quite believe the fact he is not by the time she goes to bed that night.

But a week passes, and then another, and Will remains in his workshop working the wood, though he mutters that he is having to do more of the work now that they are short staffed, and that the bosses are considering bringing women in, and Eloise clings to the fragile truth that her husband has not yet left for battle like a log in a coursing river.

* * *

The war is not over by Christmas.

Perhaps it was foolish to think it would—Kitchener would not need such a large influx of men if it were to be—but the reports coming out of Europe are clear. The volunteers to be sent to Europe at the beginning of 1915, once they are properly trained, may be there for quite a while.

Her city changes. There has always been a business about it, but the streets are frantic and muted, now; the prelude of the long, peaceful summer is a distant memory, replaced by a cacophony of rain that lashes Reading’s doors all through the winter. The Thames bursts its banks, and the Schofields are lucky not to be washed out of their home as it floods the counties.

Edith turns one as the first volunteers start leaving for France. She has always been quick, but she is a rapid now, as if she is trying to outrun the world. As if she is afraid she will not have the luxury of a future to grow up in. The idea of it chills Eloise to the bone as she watches Edith stand and walk across the sitting room without ever learning to crawl. 

She shows Will when he comes home. Edith holds her arms out to him to be picked up, and he tosses her a foot in the air and smiles as she shows her new front teeth that are just cutting through. But the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and instead of all the times he has held her close, and given her a poem as reward, he takes her by the shoulders and says, “My, my. You _have_ grown, haven’t you?”

When Edith turns away, his entire face blanks, but his eyes cannot do the same. They stare at her, pained, and Eloise knows in an instant that the waters have coursed through their house despite the lack of waterlogged furniture or damp on the walls, and that it is carrying Will with it all the way to the sea. She knows, even surer, that she will not be following.

A ticking clock starts, the second hand of the wristwatch Will just bought driving one way around the dial. She steals it one afternoon, when he is not quite used to it being there and does not notice its absence. As much as she wants to pull out the crown and linger in a single second for all eternity, she knows she cannot. She gets his initials engraved on the leather band for their anniversary, and he spends a good long time after she presents the gift just staring at the marks. Set in black, they are hard to see, and he has to strain his eyes just to be able to see them. They might as well be invisible, and Eloise feels as if she has let him down.

She squares her shoulders as the waters quicken, preparing herself for the fall; she’s well versed in the art of straight backs and properly placed shoulders—a distant memory of a schoolbook on her head as she crossed the sitting room as a child; Mother's attempts to turn her into a proper lady worth marrying—and she defaults on childhood days now. If she stops for a moment to fully understand the world around her now, she will never survive it.

“Partridge has finally gone to France,” Will says. 

A mere two months later, it is, “Henry is dead.”

Eloise does not quite believe it until she goes to the butcher’s. The entire place is laden in a certain unmistakable sorrow, and when Old Mr Harmsworth cuts off her pounds of pork, he slams the knife on the wooden countertop with such finality that for a moment, Eloise thinks the world is ending. On her way home, she sees the transport vehicles, red crosses painted on their sides, driving west to Reading War Hospital, and something within her breaks.

Up until this very moment, the war seemed some distant, far off thing that she could bat away like flies at a picnic. Now, the war has come to her, and she can no longer hide the unease she has been bottling up for the last few months.

She does something she told herself she would never do when she married. She comes back home to her little redbrick house, leaves her dignity in the front yard, and kneels before her husband. _Please,_ she begs. _I cannot bear the thought of losing you._

Will shuts his eyes. “I can’t,” he says. “I have a duty to my country. I can’t sit here at home whilst everyone else fights overseas—it wouldn’t be right.”

“Don’t you have a duty to your family?” she asks, even though she shouldn’t. Her words are empty, and her heart has half-accepted the inevitable truth, but she cannot help but be selfish for just a moment more. “You have a daughter, Will. A daughter who deserves to grow up knowing her father.”

“If we don’t win this war, there may not be a country for her to grow up _in._ I won’t stand by—this could be the world’s chance for peace, Eloise. She deserves that—you both deserve that. I built a home for us all,” he says, taking a moment to stand in their sitting room, drinking it in like he is scared he will never see it again. “Now I must defend it.”

“There is only one thing, then,” she says, as she stands, squares her shoulders, and stares Will straight in the eye. “ _Without concern,_ William.”

“Eloise. We were young—the world is not the same.”

“No, listen to me. I know it isn’t. I don’t know what’s out there, and neither do you. But, if you must go—and I won’t hurt us both by insisting you do not—I want you to never, _never_ forget what it is you are living for. What it is that you continue to wake up for each morning. Dreams will be hard to come by, in times like this. Do not lose yours.”

They are deadlocked again. There is everything to say and no words in which to say it, but perhaps they are not needed. They have been married for nearly three years now, and there is a familiarity in it. 

This time, it is Will who gives way. He pulls her in close and holds her there, but she does not melt into his touch as she has done so many times before. Her heart is in her throat, and she wants nothing more to bury her head in her hands and scream until it is clear again, but she does none of that. She just stands there, an unyielding stone pillar that will not shatter even if it has to hold up this roof by itself. Her daughter will grow up in an intact home, and her husband will come back to one. 

She swears it: today, tomorrow, and to the end of this bloody war.

The next day, Will enlists.

There is no surprise in it; he tells her exactly what he will do as he leaves the house in the morning. The day happens just like any other—she does the chores, cleans the house, then takes Edith on a walk to the shops. She does not look for her husband in the queue for the volunteer recruiting office as she passes it, even though she knows he will be there. 

Will passes his medical, swears on the Bible he will defend his King and Country, chooses a regiment— _not the Royal Berkshires,_ he says. _I don’t know why. I just felt like I’d regret it if I did._ On Friday, he receives instructions to head to a training camp, and a train ticket dated Monday to get him there.

Three days. She has three days left.

She almost wastes the first. Spends it in the usual way; her husband will be gone, but Eloise’s days will turn as they always have. She goes to the shops and tries to convince herself that nothing has changed, but she cannot. Perhaps she will, in time, but this is not that day. No, she almost wastes the first—until something within her decides to take a different route home.

She doesn’t know what she is looking for until she finds it. 

The schoolhouses have not changed since she was young. “Look, Edith,” she says, peering into the pram. “In a few years, you’ll be passing through these gates too, just like your father and me. You’ll play in the yard and do your best to keep yourself out of trouble—and hopefully, you’ll escape the cane.” _If the school is still standing by the time you are old enough,_ she thinks, before catching it between her teeth. Her daughter does not need to know about such horrors. Not yet.

A crop of schoolgirls emerge from the side entrance, clasping their needles in one hand. They pass their handiwork off to their teacher, who places all of it in a box, and Eloise is confused for a moment before it hits her. She realises, sudden and sharp, that she will have to take another detour home tomorrow.

On the second day, she asks her parents to watch Edith. There is something to be done. 

She gets her usual shopping done early so she can spend an inordinate length staring at colours. She has no reference point, so she picks one she hopes won’t stand out too much and buys it, and then half-races across the city to a house on the east side of town. She knocks twice, wildly, and the door can’t open quickly enough.

“Eloise? What are you doing here?” asks Winifred, when it finally does to reveal her sister-in-law. Eloise is still breathless from the run, but holds the colours out in front of her, desperate. 

It takes everything she has to hammer out an, “I need you to teach me.”

Winifred takes her into her home. Her daughters are delighted to see their aunt—since their father left for Europe himself, they have not seen much company, because they are still too young for school. Eloise drops to her knees and smiles at them, marvelling at their pretty ribbons and new dresses, but she cannot indulge them for too long. There is work to be done.

Winifred teaches her how to stitch, slowly, properly. Eloise knew she would—the blanket she made is folded neatly in Edith’s crib, made with love and well loved in return. 

Eloise has always been afraid of this, but with the correct guidance and an intense love for William Schofield that binds them together in a manner Eloise has never known before, she finds it is easy. Her creation begins to take shape in her hands, and though she has not finished it by the time she has to pick up her daughter again, she hasn’t a shadow of a doubt that she will.

The last day comes. It is Sunday, the day of rest, but she finds that she cannot. She kneels in the pews beside her husband and prays to God to keep him safe, just as she will do every Sunday for two years. 

She hides her work in the kitchen cupboard before church, where Will won’t find it before it is ready. 

She does not have a chance to work on it all day: once he has finished packing, Will insists on spending the day in the sitting room, him and Eloise and Edith all together, holding each other close until the fire dies. The last moments of peace before the world turns upside down. Eloise cannot deny him that.

But she also cannot let this thing go unfinished, so she sneaks out of bed once she is sure Will is asleep, retrieves her work from the kitchen cupboard, takes a lamp into Edith’s room, and works.

Stitch after stitch after stitch after stitch—she cannot rush, or she will set herself even further back—blend together, taking meaningful form. She only takes her eyes off her work when Edith stirs, a few moments to blink and remind herself that she can keep going. She will have this done by the end of the night. 

She will. 

She has to.

She does.

She slips back into bed barely two hours before she has to be up again, but she makes it, tucking it into her bag to give to Will later. 

They rise, slowly. Carry through their morning as if it is like any other, a drum beat pushing them all through the motions without having to think about it. Porridge and clean clothes for them all, now that Edith has graduated to solid food.

But Will does not leave for work, and he will not for a very long time.

The train station is not as full as she has sometimes seen it, but it is not empty, either. There are a few women that are as she is, lining up their men in front of them, and tugging at his jacket to make sure he will not be the most tardily dressed man on that train. Eloise does the same, brushing a thread from Will’s shoulder. 

“How long until the train comes?” she asks. She doesn’t want to, but Edith is tugging at her skirts and Eloise knows she won’t stop until she forms the words their daughter cannot.

“Twenty minutes,” Will says, checking his watch. “I’m sorry to have dragged you here so early.”

She shakes her head. “Better far too early than too late. You don’t want to be late, wherever you’re going. A man’s life might depend on it, someday.”

A shadow crosses over Will’s face. It passes soon enough, but the fact it was there at all, that they now have to live in an entirely different world, and they will not have the other at their side, chills her to the core. An unease to match this uncertain future makes its home in the pit of her stomach, and she does not know when it will dissipate.

But there is no time to bend. She straightens up, like she has so many times before. “Without concern, Schofield. You must not forget.”

“I won’t,” he says. 

Edith creeps out from behind Eloise and clings to Will as if to prove the point. 

He bends down before her, cupping her face in his hand. “Be good for Mummy, okay? Papa won’t be able to give her a break from you when he’s gone, so I’ll need all your help.” Edith nods furiously, though Eloise isn’t sure she fully knows the words. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps she understands anyway.

He stands again, and she catches a glimpse of the watch dial. Fifteen minutes left.

“I’m sorry it won’t be as easy, when I’m gone,” he says.

“I’ll survive.”

“Seventeen and six is half what you used to have—I’ll give you sixpence a day, and more if I can, but there’ll no doubt be changes.”

“We’ll survive,” she says. “I will do what I have to.”

Will sighs. “I don’t know how long I will be.”

“I can wait, Will. I waited seven years to meet you again, and three weeks to see you once I had. I waited two years for you to propose to me, half of one until we were married, and I wait for you to come home every evening after work. If you need me to wait, then I will wait.”

“Thank you,” he says.

In the heat of the moment, Eloise almost forgets, but Edith does not. Edith toddles back over and tugs at her bag, and a spark runs through her in an instant. “Do you think you have any more space in your pack?” she says. Her voice trembles on the last word, but she swallows the fear down. There is still something to be done.

“I can probably find some. Why?”

She reaches into her bag. For a moment she is afraid it is still in Edith’s bedroom, that she merely dreamed of putting it in there, but she finds it. She pulls it out and holds it in the space between them, offering it to him.

The scarf isn’t much. There are no elegant patterns or pretty colours; she did not have time to learn anything more than the basic stitch, and anything brighter than a dull olive would give him away on the battlefield. 

Will looks down at it. “Eloise—what is this?”

“I don’t know where they’ll send you, but I’ve heard from the women that the fields of France are impossibly cold in the winter.” She takes a breath, deep, right from the pit of her chest, and it does not soothe her stomach, but it gives her strength to go on just one moment more. “I can’t hold your hand or comfort you at the end of the day, once you are there. I will not be.” She holds the scarf out again, and Will takes it in both hands, thumbing over the knots in the yarn. “But I _can_ do this. I can keep you warm. Keep it close to your chest, Will, and know that I love you. Know that I am waiting, and I will for as long as you need me to.”

“Eloise,” he says, looking down at the scarf, holding it like a relic. “What did I do to deserve you?”

She doesn’t answer. There isn’t one. There is only a couple and their daughter on a train station platform, suspended in another coloured window for as long as they possibly can.

A whistle shatters the moment. A train starts pulling in from the west. The course of progress runs forward, swift and sure, into a fierce unknown.

Will takes her face in his hands and bends to kiss her. He aims for her forehead, but she tilts her face upwards at the last second. Their lips meet, the kiss lighter than all they have had before, but no less full of love and longing. It chokes them both up, when they part. It is not enough, and it is everything. 

And it too is soon over, as the train comes to level with the platform.

No one disembarks. This great machine is only here for men to get on, leaving their families behind them. The doors slide open. 

Will turns and steps onto the train. He moves to a nearby window, and slides himself in, but does not sit, not yet. Instead, he cracks the window open with some difficulty. “I’ll do you proud,” he calls.

She shakes her head, holding Edith close to her. “I just need you to come home to your family,” she calls back. “That’ll be enough. I’ll have the house perfect for you. Just come back to us, Schofield.”

“I’ll do my best,” he says, and it is all Eloise can ask for.

The train begins to depart. Will waves at them through the window as it pulls out of Reading station on a slow march east, until the only trace it was ever there at all are the puffs of smoke it leaves in its wake. 

And then those too are gone. 

And then Eloise’s war has begun.

**Author's Note:**

> To all of you who have made it to the end: thank you, thank you, thank you. This fic is... long, and completely and absolutely off the wall as far as 1917 fics go, but I had such an intense love for LadyCharity's version of Will's wife and I thought I'd give her some pagetime. Thank you for coming on this journey with me.
> 
> An inordinate amount of random research went into this, but I think my favourite thing I found was one I wrote in as an Easter Egg: I took Eloise's maiden name, Farr, and Will's sister, Winifred, from Miss Winifred Dorothy Farr, the beautiful woman who really had her photo taken in 1912 that then made it into the the film. (Coincidentally, the _real_ Winifred also had a younger brother named William!) Edith's middle name, Helen, comes from Helen Lufkin, the elder of the two daughters in the daughter photo.  
> More information on both ladies, as well as Helen's sister Dorothy, and what their lives were really like can be found [here.](https://pastonglass.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/from-glass-plate-to-silver-screen-1917/)
> 
> Many thanks to the Longfic Lads, who are brilliant writers in their own right: to Ealasaid, Pavuvu (who have a brilliant Ghost Blake!AU you should also read if you have not already!), WafflesRisa (who sits on a throne with her gorgeous time-loop fix-it that has my entire soul), and LadyCharity (who you no doubt will have read if you're here, and who has been waiting for this for over three weeks now. LC, I owe you my soul for these two). I'm so glad to have found such lovely, supporting, weird and wonderful writer friends with which I can love this film and have the strangest conversations with. This fic would have taken so much longer and would not be half what it is if I had not known you all.
> 
> I can be found at @scientistsinistral on Tumblr, if you'd like to chat.


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